


To Crawl Out Of Your Grave

by Hekate1308



Series: Children of Purgatory [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel implied, Emma Winchester - Freeform, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8206328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hekate1308/pseuds/Hekate1308
Summary: She had meant what she had said. She was content with the role she had chosen in Purgatory. And then she heard about the Darkness, and knew she had to help her father.





	1. Chapter 1

Finally, they had won.

True, the Leviathans were still roaming around, but they had leanred their lesson.

Not only was there no point in going against every monster in Purgatory, they also seemed to be looking for another way out, but quietly. Sometimes, they didn’t hear anything about them for months.

They were not overly worried that they would succeed in returning to earth either; as Carmilla put it “they got lucky with the angel. It won’t happen again.”

Dad won’t allow it, Emma thought.

She didn’t say it out loud, though.

Her father had eventually made it out. It wasn’t entirely clear what had happened to Castiel; rumours could only tell her so much; but since they heard no more about an angel running around, she supposed he had followed the hunter, as he always would.

Sometime later, there were strange whispers about a living human and a soul rushing through Purgatory and being helped by a vampire; it sounded too much like what Dean had done for Emma to really believe. And either way, if they had been here, they were long gone now. She didn’t think too much about it.

Time passed. Life became – bearable. No, more than bearable. She was happier than she had thought she could be for a long time.

And then she heard about the Darkness.

At first neither she nor Madison believed the whispers; monsters loved to gossip, and what was this Darkness even supposed to be?

At least that was how she thought about it until she heard the name.

Dean Winchester.

Carmilla’s pack had taken in a few new members; sadly the three were not yet ready to accept that they had died and that their habit of casually picking victims of the street might have something to do with it.

“Fucking Winchesters” one of them exclaimed bitterly after Emma and Madison had greeted them.

She managed not to flinch and felt Madison’s comforting warmth at her side.

“At least they’ll get what’s coming to them” his girlfriend said, grinning. “Now that fool left out the Darkness...”

“What?” she asked before she could help herself.

“Dean Winchester. Was apparently stupid enough to get some really bad mojo and shot it at the sky, so now an old evil is set to destroy the earth. Oh, and I heard she’s totally sweet on him; wants him as her hubby apparently, and he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. I’m kind of sad I don’t get to see it, really.”

From this day on – and after she had managed not to punch the woman for daring to say that – she thought of her father often. Of course there was a high chance the vampires had lied or simply babbled nonsense.

But what if.

What if Dean needed all the help he could get?

“You are thinking about going back, aren’t you” Madison said one evening she had once more spent in silence.

“I don’t know” she admitted. “It’s not even possible, and yet – “

“If the Leviathans can look for a way out, so can we” she said. Emma raised an eyebrow.

“You better not think about fighting the Darkness without me, young lady.”

She had to admit that her friend could only be an asset.

“So the question is: how do we get out of here? Benny said his plan had something to do with Dean being human, so I’m afraid that won’t work for us”.

“Wasn’t there some story about a way through Hell and back upstairs once?” Emma asked.

Madison nodded. “We should probably ask Carmilla. They have been here longer than we have.”

Emma bit her lip and looked away.

“We should probably tell her the truth then” she finally said. “She’ll want to know why we need to get out in the first place.”

“And that’s... alright by you?” Madison wanted to know.

She shrugged. “It had to come out one way or another.” A smile crossed her lips as she added, “They probably won’t be that surprised.”

“You think? All you need is an angel obsessed with you.”

“Do you believe he went back to them?” Emma asked suddenly. They hadn’t spoken about Castiel vanishing from Purgatory since it happened. He had been so bent on staying here, on running from Dean –

“I hope so” Madison said simply. “They need each other, and if Castiel realized that, I am more than glad for them”. She smirked. Emma knew what was coming.

“And how do you like your stepdad?”

She groaned and went to light a small fire.

As she had expected, Carmilla was not surprised when she told her what she had to do and why.

“There was something different about you right from the start.”

“I think the Sisterhood would agree”.

“Not like that” she said softly. “A hunter and an Amazon... an interesting match, no doubt. The way you’re looking for – we have heard of it. I won’t deny that. But it is difficult; and of course there is the problem...”

She paused.

“We are dead, Emma. We only exist in physical form because this is the afterlife we are supposed to have.”

“We’ll be ghosts” she replied.

Both she and Madison were aware what would happen to their souls if they returned to earth. It was the only reason Emma felt slightly apprehensive about Madison accompanying her.

“The kind of thing your father destroys”.

“So what if someone does? We’d just end up here again, wouldn’t we?”

“No one knows for sure. And I would hate to think that...” Carmilla stopped and looked at her.

“Emma, Dean Winchester may be your father, but you barely know him. Why do you wish to return to earth now to help him? You could have done that when he found you. You wanted to stay here. What changed?”

Emma looked away, feeling her cheeks flush.

“The Darkness.”

“The Darkness? The Winchesters have fought against many –“

“It’s not that the Darkness is supposed to be this great evil thing” she tried to explain. “I know they could probably handle it if it were only that. But you heard them... She has some sort of control over – over Dad.”

It had been the one thing that haunted her more than any other ever since that day the three vampires joined the pack.

Naturally, they had left in the meantime.

“During my life – all the Amazons did was control me. They told me what to do, what to think. And my father – he allowed me to make a decision. He asked me to walk away, he didn’t order me too. And when I saw him here, too – He accepted my decision. There’s a reason he and his brother stopped the Apocalypse. They believe in Free Will. And she’s taken that away. She’s taking his away. I can’t – “

She stopped talking. A moment later, Carmilla laid her hand on her shoulder.

“You’re a good woman” she told her and Emma held back a laugh at hearing the words she had so unsuccessfully used on her father as a compliment.

“I try to be. Guess that’s all we can do.”

And they had to try and get back to earth.

“So there is a way through Hell?”

Carmilla nodded.

“But remember, you could easily get trapped there. Purgatory might not be pleasant, but Hell...”

She could point them in the general direction of the gateway to Hell, though.

“So” Madison began that evening, “What do we have that works against demons?”

“I think we’ll have to make do with sigils and exorcisms... “ Emma began.

“Aren’t they supposed to send demons back to Hell? Where they already are?”

“They lock them in too” Emma said. “At least I hope so”.

Madison sighed. “You know, as a little girl I always supposed the thing with magic and monsters would be a bit more concrete than this.”

 “You thought there would be how-to manuals?”

All things considered, Emma had been given one of those. And she had made a terrible job of even sticking to the basics.

_A Winchester, alright._

“I’m just saying, it would have been easier to realize I was a werewolf” Madison sighed. “Maybe, if I had...”

Madison still struggled with having killed people, no matter how vile they had been. Emma had done her best to reassure her that it hadn’t been her fault, but of course doubts would always linger.

“At least when I’m a ghost I won’t be able to bit anyone” Madison continued, trying to sound cheerful.

“And I won’t be able to kill Dean” Emma said.

Her friend snorted. “As if you would try that again.”

“I have a feeling he can be annoying.”

“Runs in the family, then.”

Emma shoved her shoulder.

The question of whether or not they should say goodbye to the monsters they had befriended became strangely important to them. Emma, of course, had never had anyone to say goodbye too, but Madison had apparently grown very attached to their friends as well.

In the end, they chose to visit Carmilla and her pack.

She obviously hadn’t told the rest they would be leaving, and so Tommy was all smiles, as usual, clinging to “Maddie”.

“I’ll miss them” Madison said quietly as they returned to the small home they had built for themselves for the last time.

“Me too.”

And yet the prepared to go to Hell.

The one point in their favour was that they had surprised on their side. As far as they knew, no one else had ever tried to get into Hell through Purgatory. Not even the Leviathans had been desperate enough for that attempt.

“Well then” Madison said the next day, “We’re doing this.”

“Wonderful day to go to Hell, don’t you think?” she quipped. Her friend grinned at her.

“At least we always have the option of suicide. We’d probably just wake up here again”.

“Let’s just keep that as a last resort” Emma told her, grinning as well.

They might have been insane, but at least they had each other.

In the end, they stumbled across the door by accident. Then again, they hadn’t really expected anything different.

Hell, Emma had to admit, looked not like she had pictured either. Yes, there were flames and the occasional cries of the damned, but at least for now it didn’t feel that much worse than Purgatory had at first.

_Maybe because we were all doomed from the start._

They moved carefully, aware that the demons were probably able to tell what they were, or at least that there was something strange about their souls.

And true enough, soon one jumped them. Thankfully he wasn’t very strong, and seemed to think that instead of his powers a few slaps would do.

They managed to deal with him and moved on.

“I’m guessing we should probably try and go upstairs or something” Madison whispered.

“We’ll have to find the stairs first” Emma observed.

Thankfully, many demons were occupied with torturing souls, and some others...

Actually, it was rather strange; some demons they could not hide from passed them with a strange smile on their faces, as if they liked something going wrong in Hell.

“This feels strange” Madison murmured when a demon once again wandered off after having thrown a few punches. “Or is it just me?”

“No” Emma said, “The whole thing feels off. I know it’s supposed to be Hell, but...”

Suddenly they were standing in a room. There was a long line in front of them, all souls, all looking horribly sad and in pain. They couldn’t see what was in the front, but there was a little machine that gave out numbers. As they were looking at it, a man stepped past them, drew a number, sighed and stood in line.

“What the– “

“Is there a reason you are stumbling around in my Hell, causing all my demons to disobey?”

They turned around to find a demon in a black suit.

His eyes were red.


	2. Chapter 2

Emma shuffled closer to Madison. The demon smiled.

“What have we here? An Amazon and a werewolf... you’re a pretty odd pair”.

“We don’t want any trouble” Madison said, “We just want to return to earth...”

“Now wouldn’t that be quaint if I just allowed anyone to stroll in here...”

“We’re not asking for permission” Emma snapped. Something about this demon made her feel even more uncomfortable than she already was.

“I was aware of that.”

The red in his eyes slowly disappeared as he studied her. She tried to hold his gaze, but found herself unable to; and, as she was used to when she was nervous, she brought her hand up to scratch her neck.

To her surprise, the demon looked startled for a second before he smirked again.

“Why don’t we start with why you’re here”.

“We told you” Madison said quietly, aware that Emma’s temperament might get in the way.

She was willing to bet she had that from Dean too, although she hadn’t yet learned to always hold her temper, unlike the older hunter.

“No you didn’t. Purgatory may be no walk in the park, but none of you monsters would be desperate enough to climb through Hell to get out. So the questions remains, why would you risk it?”

“Maybe we’re just a couple of morons” Emma said, “I thought you demons didn’t think highly of monsters.”

She realized too late that she should keep as quiet as possible, because the demon was studying her again in this quiet, confident way of his that set her on edge immediately.

“I did hear rumours...” he said slowly. “At the time, of course, I was a little preoccupied; and then it was all over before I could use it to my advantage, even if I had believed it then.”

He stepped up to Emma; funny enough, he wasn’t leering at her in anyway, which she would have expected from a demon.

She had got her lucks from her father, after all.

And as if he could read her thoughts, he said, “I recognize Winchesters from a mile off, these days. Must be the desperate air of trying to save the world.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about” she tried. He shook his head.

“Come on now. If I am right, and I always am, then you must have some brains, even if you do like to play stupid. Just like your father.”

A shiver ran down her spine.

“What – “

“Now, now, don’t disappoint me. I’ve had enough disappointments”.

And for a moment, he almost looked – human.

“So what is Dean Winchester’s daughter doing in Hell?”

“Seems to be a family tradition” she told him, watching Madison from the croner of her eye lest her friend do something incredibly brave and risky. She had been known to do that, when it came to Emma’s safety.

“That is true” he conceded, stepping back. “And what is your name, you prodigy?”

“Emma Winchester” she said more proudly than she ever had before.

“So Mummy allowed you to take your Daddy’s name? Not exactly an amazon tradition, if I recall correctly.” He turned to look at Madison.

“And who would your charming friend be?”

“Madison” she spat, apparently having had enough after that last comment.

Emma felt a surge of gratitude towards her, but really, she hadn’t thought of her mother in a long while.

Not since she took her father’s name.

“And?”

Madison remained stubbornly silent.

“If you want to be like that. So, Emma Winchester and Madison – what am I going to do with you?”

“Whatever it is, can you start soon, so I can plot our escape? We don’t have much time” Emma said.

She was tired of the game the demon seemed so intent on playing.

“For what? Ghosting around? Because that is what you will be doing, unless through some magical means, you find your bodies and are able to return to them... preferably in a non-zombie state, of course.”

So that was what he wanted. A deal.

No thank you. She had heard enough about those.

“If you are trying to make a deal with us – “

“Please. Why should I? If I wanted your souls, I could just keep you here. Let’s just say I know all about the little... situation the Winchesters have found themselves in again. And I am interested in how things will proceed. So all I ask for is... information.”

“Information?”

On the one hand, they could easily control what they told the demon.

On the other, she had heard many stories (or as many as the Sisterhood had been able in the three days she’d had top site) about how cunning and dangerous demons were. Of course, they had always ended, they were no match for a true Amazon, but...

“Yes. I want to know what’s happening at your end.”

“You want us to spy on my father.”

“Spy is a hard word. I want to know what’s going on”.

There was a strange expression on the demon’s face. It almost looked like...

He cared about something very strongly.

Or someone.

But that couldn’t be possible, surely? Demons didn’t care.

“You return us to our bodies” Madison spoke up, “and we give you information and that’s it? No hidden details?”

He raised his hands. “We don’t even have to kiss. No contract.”

“Why?”

“I have my experiences” he replied cryptically, impatient.

“Do you want the deal or not?”

“Would you give us a minute?”

Surprisingly, after he had certainly looked annoyed enough at their hesitation, he seemed to understand their need to discuss his terms between them and withdrew a few feet.

They perhaps unwisely turned their backs at him. There were some risks you had to take.

“What do you think?” Madison whispered.

“We wouldn’t be ghosts” she mumbled back. “That’s one problem solved, anyway.”

“And the spying?”

“He didn’t say we couldn’t tell them about it”.

Madison’s eyes widened.

“You’re right. Think it’s an oversight or...”

“I don’t think this guy overlooks anything” Emma said.

The way the demon acted... He had to be pretty powerful, high up on the food chain. He was not in the least bit worried.

It was easy to see why he should want information about hunters, but Emma still had the feeling that there was more to it.

And why couldn’t she shake her impression that the demon cared about – about –

She couldn’t exactly say what she thought he cared about, but care he did.

“Should we risk it?” Madison asked.

“I would” Emma told her. “And you –“

“You know me, always ready to follow the dangerous plan”.

They nodded at one another and turned around.

“So... any idea where Daddy dropped your body?” Crowley asked.

Emma clenched her hands into fists as she shook her head.

“He might have burned it.”

“Might have, but it would be useless since monsters don’t come back as ghosts. They just go straight to Purgatory. Never found out why – I don’t suppose you know?”

When they didn’t answer, he sighed.

“Alright then. Where did you happen to die, Miss Squirrel?”

She wondered how he had come up with the nickname but said nothing. Madison begrudgingly told him her last name so he could restore her body as well.

“I will see you later, girls”.

And with that, everything went dark.

Emma woke up in a dark, confined space, gasping for air.

_That son of a bitch. He restored me in my – coffin?_

Why was she in a coffin? Didn’t hunters just burry the monsters they killed anywhere?

She quickly pulled her shirt over her head and thumped against the lid. Thankfully, with her Amazon strength – she had almost forgotten about it in Purgatory, with so many monsters being stronger than her – it broke soon and earth fell down on her. She managed to take a deep breath before that, though, and with her shirt still over her started to climb up.

They hadn’t buried her very deep.

But they had buried her – rather properly, if she said so herself.

She was deep in a forest, so deep that she doubted anyone had found her grave since it had been dug.

There was a small wooden cross where her head had rested.

She wondered if Dean had built it himself.

Probably.

He’d even carved “RIP” into it. She reached out and touched the letters gently.

She had been right to come back, she knew then.

She needed to find Madison, and quickly. Her friend had been fairly sure she would have been buried in San Francisco, so there she would go.

Only that she currently had no money.

She looked down at the cross again.

What would Dean do?

The answer was easy. And after all she had been taught everything an Amazon may need to survive in the modern world –

Half an hour later she sat in a stolen car. Maybe not exactly a first living decision to be proud of, but at least it was a family tradition.

Come to think of it, it was her first time driving too. It proved not as difficult as she had feared.

She was beginning to think she had inherited more from her father than she had thought.

Emma didn’t feel tired or hungry at all, and she sent a silent thank you to Crowley. Sure, making a deal with a demon was fishy, but once she had explained what was going on, Dean would certainly understand why, and then they could plan what to tell the demon.

She went off the gas a little when she realized that all her plans hinged on her father welcoming her with open arms.

What if he didn’t?

He had been – kind to her, in Purgatory. But Purgatory was not earth. He had been fighting for his life, looking for his best friend, and he had known that Emma belonged there.

Now, though? What would he say if she just showed up? What if he didn’t want her?

What if he sent her away, like her mother had?

Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. She wanted to help. She was going to help. Even if he didn’t want her around, she was going to –

Not she. They. She wasn’t alone.

Whatever happened, she wasn’t alone. Madison was going to be there.

She stepped on the gas.

800 miles. If she got lucky, she could get there in 12 hours.

She had to be careful, of course; she didn’t fancy being arrested.

Despite that, she made it in eleven and a half hours.

Crowley had acted a little too quickly for them – they had not thought of being separated, so they had not made any plans as to where to meet. But Emma trusted that Madison would know to stick around, since only she knew where she would be buried, exactly; and so she finally arrived at San Francisco, the moon shining –

The moon.

She quickly checked it and was glad to see it was a half-moon. They couldn’t forget that Madison was a werewolf, now. In the perpetual Twilight of Purgatory, she had been more or elss human, all her wolf instincts deeply asleep.

Now, though...

Madison had only been a werewolf in a short time, and during that she had killed several people. People who had had it coming, but still...

No. Madison would learn. She had Emma to look after her, this time around.

Everything would be alright.

They could make plans once they found each other.

San Francisco had several cemeteries, but only one in which Madison’s grandparents had been buried. She would certainly have been interred near them.

And indeed, Emma had barely made it to the entrance of the place when she heard her friend calling her name.

Madison was standing across the street, waving at her.

She quickly ran over to hug her.

“We made it” Madison told her. “We actually made it.”

“I know”.

Emma smiled. “On to the harder part.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

As it turned out, locating two hunters who were well used to keeping themselves out of everyone’s eye wasn’t exactly easy.

According to Madison (and what the Amazons had told her about her father) he and his brother drove around the country, hunting whatever they could find.

“We could always kill someone” Madison joked after three fruitless days. “I’m sure they’d come running then.”

“Yeah, but how would you like ending back in Purgatory before you could even open your mouth?”

Madison shrugged. “I don’t think –“ She paused and looked out of the window of the diner they were having lunch in.

“It’s weird, being back.” She looked at Emma. “Don’t you think so?”

She shrugged helplessly. “My whole life was weird. I was only here for three days. Everything is strange to me.”

Madison laughed. “I guess thta’s true”.

“You’re pretty good at... finding clothes and stuff” Emma said, carefully looking around to make sure no one paid them attention. They wouldn’t have found them talking about anything suspicious, but still. They subsisted on stolen money, after all.

“Oh, you should have seen me in college. I had my wild days.”

“I bet. When we met, you couldn’t even take care of a Wendigo.”

Good, so anyone caring to listen wouldn’t hear anything _too_ suspicious. But for a long time, this had been what they had talked about. Before they began to trust each other completely.

“In my defence, it was a tall Wendigo”.

Emma snorted. “I thought you had a wild side. That thing was barely taller than you.”

“I’ll tell you what is tall and what isn’t, remember, I was around for longer than you...”

And so lunch went on.

It did them both good, their kind of normalcy.

After they had eaten, they purchased another bout of newspapers. Emma, who had not had much experience with technology during her studies at the Sisterhood, went through them in their motel room while Madison visited a nearby internet café.

Finally, in the _San Francisco Examiner_ , Emma found something.

Strange deaths in small town

 **Wyoming**. Several people have died of what has been referred to as “a severe skin disease” by authorities in Allersdale, Wyoming, in the past week. According to witnesses – none of whom show any symptoms of the illness – the disease is accompanied by strong itching across the body, causing people to scratch themselves until they bleed, then fever. Death occurs within an hour of the beginning of the itching. The...

She was calling Madison on their newly acquired burn phone before she finished the article. This didn’t sound like any disease she’d ever heard of. Witches. It was probably witches.

Or ghost sickness, although as far as she knew, that operated differently...

Either way, they quickly agreed they were going to Wyoming.

“Good thing you like to drive” Madison told her, relaxing in the passenger seat. “I never did. I get too easily distracted by things. Only when I drive, though.”

“Might be the genes” Emma said, “at least Dean’s. One of these vampires Carmilla met told her that he loves his car.” Her mother hadn’t spoken to her about such things, so she had no idea if Lydia liked to drive. She couldn’t even clearly remember if she’d had a car. She’d spent so little time with her...

Then again, she’d probably spent even less time with Dean.

Her family was, to put it mildly, unconventional.

“Hey, where did you go just now?” Madison squeezed her shoulder. “You’re gripping that wheel as if your life depends on it.”

“Sorry. Lost in thought, I guess.”

“See, that happens to me too, only I crash” Madison supplied. She knew something was wrong, but she also felt that Emma needed her space. She could wait.

They drove eight hours each day and arrived in Allersdale on the third after having decided it would be best to get enough sleep on the road and enter the town awake and with all their wits about them.

“They’ll use a ruse, right? Look at the bodies, question witnesses?”

“As far as I know, it’s what they usually do” Madison agreed. “And they’d be in a cheap motel, and I guess you should know the rest.”

“What do you mean? Cheap hotels aren’t exactly – “

“They are hiding Emma, or at least as well as they can, so isn’t there... some sort of logic behind this? You know, a place where you can escape easily and – “

“Oh. Of course.”

In fact that had been one of the lessons that had been drilled into her. How to blend in and find a place to stay in a strange town, in case you got send out on a mission by the Sisterhood.

It all seems so long ago now.

And considering it was 2016, it had been.

“Good then. Ready to check out the low points of Allersdale?”

“Always.”

They must have checked three dozen motels by the time they found the right one.

But at least they knew immediately they had hit jackpot – Madison easily identified the car parking in dfront of the motel.

Thankfully she’d seen it before. Emma had died before she had a chance to.

“So what do we do? Just knock on the door?” Madison asked. Neither of them thought it would be difficult to find out which room they lived in. “They should let us in, if only to investigate – “

She was interrupted by a deep voice gasping, “Emma?”

Then, a second later, “Madison!?”

This was not what Emma had planned at all. If anything, she’d wanted to take a gently approach.

So, she could only turn around and say, “Hi, Dean.”

To say the brothers were surprised would be an understatement. Emma had expected that.

But what had never crossed her mind was how embarrassing it would be.

Dean might be sitting in a room with his monster daughter and his brother’s monster ex-lover, but Sam?

Sam had killed both of them, after all.

And that embarrassment led to understandable confusion.

Thank God Dean was there.

“SAM! You can’t test Emma with iron!” he slapped his hand with the knife away. “Neither of them, actually.”

“How nice of you to think of me” Madison commented, but there was no fire behind her words. In fact, the very first thing she had done was to tell Sam that she bore him no ill-will and trying to make it clear that Emma and Dean were supposed to – supposed to –

What exactly? Bond? She’d not even done that with Lydia, and she had no idea if their talk in Purgatory counted.

Could she even talk about it? She’d no idea if he had told his brother.

The only thing that made the silence between them bearable was that Dean was obviously as uncomfortable as Emma herself.

“Now that we have established you are – yourselves” Sam said with a shy glance at Madison, “How did you come back?”

“We went through Hell” Emma answered simply. Both brothers flinched.

“You mean the door in Purgatory?” Sam asked. She nodded.

“I don’t think we would have made it out” Madison continued, “But there was a demon who helped us – “

“A demon?” Dean asked sharply, looking at Emma. For the first time, she felt as a child must if it was about to be reprimanded.

“Yes. Don’t worry, we didn’t make a deal – at least we didn’t sell our souls. He wanted to be kept up to date as to what you were doing. We agreed because we didn’t want to be ghosts.”

Dean sighed. “He a suit-wearing sarcastic dick by any chance?”

“He said his name was Crowley”.

“That’s the one” Sam said while Dean looked away. “He’s the King of Hell.”

“The demons didn’t seem very happy” Madison replied.

“They wouldn’t be. No one likes Hell. Not even Crowley” Dean explained, but there was a strange expression on his face.

Emma didn’t know how to read it. But maybe that wasn’t surprising.

She knew a lot about monsters, she knew little about humans.

“Where’s Castiel?” she asked instead.

Dean shrugged. “He flies around a lot, these days”.

“Dean” Sam chastised him gently.

“Hey, I didn’t say he didn’t have anything important to do.”

Emma traded a glance with Madison. That didn’t sound like the man who’d torn through Purgatory for a year only to find his angel at all.

And she had assumed that, if Castiel should return to earth after all, he would stay close to the Winchesters.

Apparently not.

What had happened?

By what she understood from the explanations that followed, quite a lot.

At least Madison looked as overwhelmed as Emma felt.

“And I thought being turned into a werewolf was complicated” she said, shaking her head.

“How are you doing, by the way?” Dean asked worriedly. “We have a friend who can set you up with animal hearts if you need them.”

“Might be a good idea around the new moon...” she answered. Her and Sam hadn’t yet spoken more than a few words to each other, but certain looks made Emma sure this was due to the awkwardness of the situation more than anything else.

Dean apparently came to the same conclusion, because he stood up abruptly.

“I’m going to have a – “

He looked at Emma and seemed taken aback for a moment before he continued, “A soda. Would you like to come with?”

 _The last time I saw you you were carrying  a bloody knife, and now you want to buy me a soda_ , she thought, and for some reason it made her want to laugh.

She didn’t. Instead, she nodded.

“Be back soon, Sammy. Madison”.

“You are not very subtle” she observed  while they walked to the small grocery store at the end of the street.

He shrugged.

“I know it’s kind of awkward, with Sam having killed you both, and these two – guess you know all about that. But you two are here, so they’ll have to deal. They need to clear the air.”

_So do we._

Another thought she left unspoken.

They drank their sodas in silence sitting on a bench, enjoying the last few minutes of sunlight of the day.

Somehow, with all their plans to return, she had never thought about what she would actually _say_ to her father.

“I meant it” Dean said suddenly. “What I said to you back there. If I had known you’d wanted to come back – “

“I know. I meant it, too. I wanted to stay.”

“Then why now?” he asked bluntly.

“Because of the Darkness” she answered just as honestly.

“You know about her?” he breathed.

“You know Purgatory. The whispers...” he nodded courtly.

“I don’t know, it didn’t sound good and I thought – I thought – “

It had been so much easier to explain to Carmilla why she had to go back. Now, looking at Dean –

“They say the Darkness has some kind of hold over you” she said finally. “And I figured you could use any help you can get. No one should be controlled against their will.”

Dean studied her before commenting, “You’ve really grown up”.

“Purgatory does that to you.”

“I suppose it does” he agreed.

Something silent passed between them, and later she would understand that this was the moment he really began to trust her, the moment he realized she understood about Purgatory.

“She calls herself Amara” he told her, “and yes, she thinks we are soulmates, apparently.” After a pause he added, “And I can’t stop her.”

Emma knew that normally parents were supposed to comfort their children, not the other way around, but when had anything about them ever been normal?

“You can” she said firmly. “And you will.”

And as he looked at her, the light of the setting sun gliding over his features, she remembered her thoughts in Purgatory about living a normal life as a family.

And for the first time, she thought they could find something similar after all.


End file.
